What You Need To Know About Baking Frozen Spaghetti
It's no secret that spaghetti is always better the next day. Fine Cooking notes, reheating this dish actually enhances the flavor. But did you know that you can freeze pasta and reheat it? The ability to freeze this favorite dish allows you to make large batches that are readily accessible and easy to reheat and serve for a busy week night dinner. And with Statista saying that 45.38 million Americans use six or more jars or cans of spaghetti sauce in 2020, you know this is a go-to meal for a large swath of people.
According to Don't Waste the Crumbs, it doesn't matter if you have just frozen noodles or frozen noodles with spaghetti sauce, both can be reheated and served up for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Spaghetti noodles sans the sauce are relatively easy to reheat from their frozen state. Whether you choose to let your pasta defrost in warm water or boil a pot of water and toss in the frozen noodles, let them thaw, and then cook for a minute. But what if you have frozen spaghetti with the sauce? You will need to bake it — here's how to do just that.
You can skip the step of thawing frozen spaghetti
According to eHow, when you are ready to reheat your frozen spaghetti, you are going to want to bake it in the oven so that it defrosts and reheats evenly and you aren't biting into any frozen or cold bits of pasta. They also note that the reason you can skip the thawing step is because your frozen spaghetti will take less than two hours to reach its safe minimum internal temperature for eating, which is 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
With this in mind, the first thing you want to do is preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove your frozen spaghetti from its freezer-safe container and place it in a metal baking pan. Break-out your handy-dandy aluminum foil, cover the pan, and pop your frozen spaghetti in the oven. Cook for about 30 minutes and then rotate the pan 180 degrees and let it cook a little longer. eHow notes that cook time is largely dependent on the depth of your pasta. Frozen spaghetti that's about 1 to 1.5 inches high will take about an hour to bake or until it hits that all-important internal temperature of 165 degrees.